Ulead® DVD PictureShow™ Imaging Suite?

[Nikos]

As of now I have Adobe Photoshop as my image editor.

That being the case--I want to get a great slide show program that can show captions for each image and be able to have different music for each picture (or a group of pictures with one song).

My question is should I get the Ulead® DVD PictureShow™ Imaging Suite or just the plain DVD PictureShow considering I have ADOBE PHOTOSHOP? How good are Photo Explorer and Photo Express 4.0
(which comprise the SUITE)?

Anyone know if getting the SUITE is worth it?

[ahfairley]

I'm not sure you will be able to do what you want with DVD Picshow. The program allows you to appy one sound track to each slide show (you can haver several shows on one disk, with a menu button for each). Of course, you can pre-mix a soundrack in sound editing software, and drop that in as the sound track.

If you really want to mix up a lot of different audio in a slideshow, think about using a video editor, such as Vegas Video 3. That will allow you to work directly on the soundtrack in the show, and will also give you accurate time codes for the transitions. You could also do stuff like vary the time each "slide" is on the screen, and add transitions. If you go the video editor route, one thing you have to do is to resize your still photos to the size you will render to (eg 720x480 for NTSC DVD) in Pshop (use a batch action) before you import them into VV3, since VV3 does a crappy job or resizing.

I haven't used the suite, but if you have Photoshop, the only reason I can think to use other photo editing software is that it would be less complicated than Pshop.

[Nikos]

Actually I am going to make the audio mix first and seperate, but I was wondering if I can RIG how long each image is shown (and have certain images being displayed LONGER than the other) is this possible with this program?

I have Easy CD Creator 5 but that doesn't allow captions or does not allow me to rig each image to show a DESIRED amount of time....

Does Ulead DVD Pictureshow do this?

[ahfairley]

You have to set the time the same for all pictures in a show. I guess you could have a picture repeat a couple of times if you wanted it to stay on longer, but I'm not sure if you would see a jump at the transiton. I'll try it out later this weekend -- or you can download the demo and experiement (it's limited to 10 images per show).

[MOVIEGEEK]

Nikos,
DVD PictureShow doesn't offer captions or time shifting(one time applies to all).

[ahfairley]

Of course, you could use photoshop to put captions in your photos first, if you wanted to take the time. You can also make title slides in Photoshop and insert them like any other image.

[Nikos]

Is there a program that offers time shifting and captions? Does Vegas Video offer this or Adobe Premeire?

[ahfairley]

Hey Nikos, I just did a little test, and you can set different times in the slideshow in DVD Slideshow by repeating slides. You can't see a transition between the repeats. Only problem is that you're limited to 99 slides total in a show, so if you have a large number of images, the amount you can change the times is limited.

To answer your latest post, yes you can do both in VV3. You batch set the time for all the images when you import, but you can shorten or increase the time for each image by pulling it along the timeling. You can also add pan and zoom effects if you want (like in documentaries, when the camera pans across a still photo). Captions are done with the built in text editor. I assume you can do the same thing in Premiere. There's a Vegas demo at sonicfoundry.com